Life's Little Landmarks

By

Ralph Gardner Jr.

Updated Sept. 16, 2012 10:56 p.m. ET

I had a meeting a few weeks back on East 19th Street that was scheduled for 2:30 p.m. If I finished the column I was writing by one o'clock, that left just enough time to get downtown on the subway, have lunch at Thé Adoré on East 13th Street, and make it to the meeting on time. Unless, I had to wait for a table at the restaurant, which is often the case.

For those who have never experienced the subtle joys of Thé Adoré, allow me to describe them. You climb a set of rickety stairs to the tearoom/sandwich shop's second-floor dining area. There you find simple wooden tables and chairs, and a picture window that fills the entire south side of the room. It frames a tree that lends the sense that you're somewhere other than New York, somewhere where life proceeds at a more leisurely pace. Amsterdam, perhaps?

ENLARGE

Rob Shepperson

And the soups and sandwiches that draw me to Thé Adoré also remind me of those Amsterdam sandwich shops, not that I'm especially acquainted with Amsterdam sandwich shops. It's more the way I fantasize them to be—delicate, inventive, cozy. They seem conceived to produce contentment rather than thrills.

My favorite $10 meal at Thé Adoréis the potato leek soup, followed by a melted smoked-mozzarella sandwich with grilled yellow squash, radicchio and arugula on a baguette. I wash it down with an aranciata Pellegrino. Other popular sandwiches include boiled egg, tomato and cucumber; and smoked duck. You somehow feel virtuous eating there, a member of a cognoscenti who appreciates that the secret to happiness lies in moderation rather than excess; the place is frequented by tweedy professor types and graduate students engaged in more erudite-than-average conversation.

But when I arrived there before my meeting, Thé Adoré was gone. So were the two or three welcoming, green metal folding chairs that used to sit out front. I looked up for the second-story picture window wondering if, after perhaps 20 years patronizing the place, I was on the wrong street.

Eventually I approached some people standing in front of the New School, just down the block. One of them informed me that Thé Adoré had been closed for six months or more. (I said it was one of my favorite restaurants—I didn't say I got there often. That I had to travel, that it was a destination, only added to its quiet charm. And yes, I heard it got a "C" grade from the health department, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with its demise.) Once I established that it was closed, I felt lost. Not literally, of course. I know my way around Manhattan pretty well. But I had my taste buds set exactly on Thé Adoré's menu. However, my sense of loss exceeded either geography or gastronomy. I felt a temporary sense of disorientation.

Of course, there were legions of other places to eat—Chinese, Vietnamese, Mexican, vegetarian (though I ended up getting a ham and swiss on rye and brown-bagging it in Union Square Park). But what this unanticipated disruption underlined was the perhaps overlooked ritual contribution that New Yorkers' favorite stores and restaurants make to their experience of the city, and to their lives in general. I felt as if someone with a malicious sense of humor had pulled the rug out from under me. I was more angry than disappointed. And hungrier than ever.

It's undoubtedly an exaggeration to compare such a loss to that of a loved one, or even a solid acquaintance. But maybe not. In the same way that your psychological well-being counts on the sun to rise in the East and set in the West, or your family and friends to be there in a crunch, so these businesses, and their steadfast presence, contribute in some incremental way, to tamping down the chaos of the universe—especially if they make an excellent, affordable, aesthetically pleasing sandwich.

But it goes even beyond that. I associate particular restaurants and stores with different periods in my life; they're like autobiographical footnotes. In grammar school it was sometimes the Schrafft's on Madison Avenue and East 59th Street, whose hot butterscotch sundaes remain unsurpassed.

To this day I feel the loss of the Doubleday bookstore on Fifth Avenue and 56th Street, where I purchased my summer reading as a teenager. I associate my children's childhoods with stopping at Pintaile's Pizza on Madison Avenue and East 91st Street, alas also closed, for an after-school slice. Occasionally, they joined me.

When a colleague heard I was writing this column, she sank into lamentations over the shuttering, half a decade ago, of Kurowycky, a meat seller in the East Village where she used to buy her Christmas ham. She described the continuing "psychic cost." I asked whether she'd tried the ham at Schaller & Weber. She had. "Too salty," she claimed. But a suitable alternative is almost beside the point. It's about the way the place resonated in your life at a particular time—where along your chronological and emotional timeline the two of you intersected.

For some reason, I'm reminded of Rigo, a Hungarian pastry shop on East 78th Street that is no longer in business. I often picked up breakfast or dessert there when I was in my 20s and lived around the corner. One time I got home, opened the bag and discovered owner Lily Josephy's wedding ring nestled beside my linzer torte. Obviously, I returned it and, if memory serves me correctly, was rewarded with her eternal gratitude and an excellent piece of seven-layer cake.

Recently, I've been getting emails from people mourning the loss of Lascoff's, a pharmacy that has been on the corner of East 82nd Street and Lexington Avenue since 1899. That the handsome brownstone could be torn down and a high rise built in its place is only partially the cause of their shock and sorrow. The shop, its location anchoring the corner, and its antique ambience, helped define the neighborhood.

I called the broker handling the building, and he told me there are no plans to raze it. They hope to rent it, perhaps to an upscale restaurant. That's good news. However, the wood-paneled interior, with its apothecary jars and gothic windows—which made you feel as if you were stepping back in time—has been completely gutted. All that remains is the building's shell.

For those who remember it as it was, they may feel as if something inside of them has been hollowed out, too.

—ralph.gardner@wsj.com

Corrections & Amplifications Thé Adoré is the complete name of the restaurant formerly on East 13th Street. It was referred to incorrectly as the Adoré in an earlier version of this article.

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